


head, shoulders, knees, and toes (and a little chubby face)

by marginaliana



Category: Good Omens (TV) RPF
Genre: Babies, Dorks, F/M, Football | Soccer, Gen, Mostly Gen, background canon het - Freeform, drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 00:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20461784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: Michael, David, a baby announcement, beer, and a challenge.





	head, shoulders, knees, and toes (and a little chubby face)

**Author's Note:**

> This is fiction. It didn't happen. I am not trying to imply that it did. 
> 
> Michael, Georgia, Neil - please don't tell anyone if you read this. (Probably don't have to worry about David, I guess!)
> 
> Many, many thanks to emef for the beta.

"I'm telling you," David said. He was only slurring a little, but Michael could see that it took a bit of effort for him to put his beer bottle down on the bar without spilling any. "You can't do it."

Michael was marginally less drunk, despite it being _his_ baby announcement they were celebrating. Probably because David was basically a noodle that became floppier as he was immersed in liquid and/or as liquid was immersed in him. Still, Michael had to take a moment to stifle a belch before he could reply. "I can. Just because _you_ can't—"

"Who says I can't?"

"You've got twenty seven hip joints!" The exact number eluded him, just at the moment, but that hardly signified. Hip joints. That was the important bit.

"So I'm more flexible, that's all." 

"Don't try to frighten me with veiled sex jokes, DT."

"I'd do better than that if I were trying to be veiled."

Michael had to admit that was true. It was one of David's strengths, being remarkably unsubtle about his subtleness. Or the other way around, perhaps. Or both. He shook his head. "Well. My point remains."

"Right, let's both of us have a go, then. Whoever loses has to… has to…"

"You'd better pick something you don't mind doing," Michael said, trying to keep the words crisp and failing miserably. "'Cause you're gonna have to do it."

"Nope."

"If you're that sure you can back it up, choose accordingly." A flutter of trepidation made its way into Michael's head, but he shoved it right back out again. He knew he could do this; he'd done it lots of times over the years. He'd developed it as a skill precisely in order to look cool in front of friends and strangers in bars.

Perhaps he hadn't done it recently, or when he was _quite_ this rat-arsed, it was true. But he was riding high on happiness and that would surely substitute for perfect control.

"Fine, then," David said. "Loser has to name his baby _Warlock_."

Michael choked, then began to laugh, then laughed so hard that he came back around to choking again and started to cough. David just beamed at him. 

"Brilliant idea, yeah?"

"You realize," Michael rasped, when he could speak again, "that Georgia will absolutely murder you."

"She'll think it's brilliant when I tell her what _you_ are naming _your_ baby."

Michael snorted. "I don't like to deprive her of any pleasure, but I absolutely will not lose."

"Is that you taking my bet?" David asked, raising his eyebrows. "Because you're going to have to continue living with Anna, you know. Imagine it. Being at the hospital, writing the name on the birth certificate, being shouted at for hours and hours…"

Another wisp of trepidation. He'd had a number of beers already – the exact number eluded him, just like David's hip joints – and perhaps it really wouldn't be wise. On the other hand, there was the challenge in David's expression. "I have absolutely no doubts," Michael lied firmly. He held out his hand.

David shook it, and then as he pulled his hand back, he raised it to the sky. "To the arena!"

They decamped to the carpark and Michael pulled open the boot of his car to reveal the instrument of his impending triumph: a worn, dirty, and beloved football.

This was where they'd started, back at the bar: Michael's enthusiasm for teaching his child to play, his love for this ball that had lived with him for years. Not the one from his childhood, because there were limits to what maintenance could achieve, but one that he'd held and loved long enough for it to be his own. And soon it wouldn't be that anymore, wouldn't be his. Soon it would belong in small hands, would carry dirt from the ground to an entirely different chubby face.

Michael held it in his own hands and thought reverently of its potential.

"Go on, then," David said, completely failing to appreciate the moment.

Michael gave him a look, but the mood was broken. "You don't want to go first? Prove me wrong right off?"

"Nah," David said. "Got to do a little, you know. Warming up." Considering that he was leaning heavily against the side of Michael's car, Michael wondered if there was any amount of warming that would help. He decided to be kind and not mention that, but he did watch while David jogged in place, stretched his arms in every direction, bent down and wobblingly touched his toes three or four times, and generally turned his human noodle self into a human pretzel. Michael was surprised that he could do it without falling over.

Finally, when David was finished, he turned back. "Going to show me what you can do?" 

Michael flicked the ball at him. "Nah, I've still got to warm up myself. But since you're all done with that bit, you can go ahead."

David gaped at him as he caught the ball, then said admiringly, "You're a bad man, Mr. Sheen. Bad. Naughty. Decidedly not nice at all."

Michael grinned. "Thank you, sir." He gave David one more moment, then said, "Right, off you go. Alternating feet, alternating knees, alternating shoulders, off the forehead and back into the hands, just as we said. And I promise that when I tell little Warlock Tennant about this, someday in the future, I'll make you sound majestic in your failure."

David flicked him two fingers underneath the curve of the ball, but he took a deep breath, bounced the ball in his hands a few times, and then went for it.

Down, up – it wasn't the most elegant string of ball juggling Michael had ever seen, but David didn't let it fall. He twitched and ducked and noodle flopped and, as the ball came awkwardly off his forehead at the last moment, actually leapt forward a few feet in order to catch it. But caught it he did.

"Hah!"

Michael nodded reluctantly. "Impressive. Actually quite impressive." It was, since David hadn't practiced this sort of thing every Sunday for the past five years. If Michael fucked up his own attempt, he was going to have to crawl under the bed in his hotel room and expire of shame.

"Your go, then," David said. "Feel free to take as much time as you need for that warm up." He was breathing a little heavily and half-slumped on the bonnet of the car, but the triumphant look on his face was undimmed.

Michael was tempted to say that he didn't need any warm up at all. But even in his current stage of inebriation, he wasn't that much of an idiot. He worked through a quick set of stretches, ignoring the faces that David was pulling, and then finally reached out for the ball when he thought he was ready.

He had to get this right. Because even without considering his own pride, going through life with a name like 'Warlock Sheen' was _not_ a lesson he was going to make his kid learn.

Two tosses to get ready, to find his memory of the weight and feel of the ball. Then down, and he fell into the rhythm of it easily. Perhaps a bit less precise than he had been, once upon a time, but he was certainly smoother than David, and when at last the ball came to rest in his hands, he had just enough control left to flip it up and juggle it showily on the backs of his wrists for a moment as well. Then he dropped it and it rolled under the car, but that was all right.

He collapsed on the bonnet at David's side, breathing hard.

"We both did it," David said blankly. "We both…"

Michael hummed. "So we're both off the hook, right?"

"We can't both be off the hook," David said.

That was an alarming thought. Michael turned to look at him. "Why not?"

"That's not how it works! Someone has to end up with Warlock."

"Well," Michael sputtered. "Well, if it's not going to be you, and it's certainly not going to be me…"

"I know," David said triumphantly. "Neil's baby can be Warlock!"

"Is Neil having a baby?"

"Dunno."

"I think that's a bit important," Michael pointed out. 

David waved it off. "Pffft," he said. "A trifling detail." His tongue got hung up on 'trifling' and he had to pause, go back, and then take it at a run. It still sounded like it had seventeen fs in it. "He'll have one."

"What're you going to do, implant one in him?" Michael watched David's eyes light up and regretted the sentence immediately. "DT, you cannot do that. And I don't mean it in a 'you can't juggle a football' sort of way. You physically cannot do it."

"I'm a demon," David said petulantly. "I've been a demon for a year now, practically."

"I'm afraid I have to break it to you that you aren't and you haven't."

"Yes, yes, I know. But what if I _could_ be?"

"Are you experiencing a religious revelation here?"

"Well. No. But we can convince him, can't we? He's an obliging chap. Besides, if Neil does it, it'll just be normal. It's _Neil_. He could call a kid Humplety Snumperdink and everyone would decide it's eldritch and cool and within a year we'd be up to our ears in Humplety Snumperdinks."

Michael was deeply impressed that David could pronounce Humplety Snumperdink in his current condition. That probably meant he needed another beer. 

There was beer back at the bar inside. Much beer. They could drink it, if they got up.

Michael got as far as nudging David with his elbow before the hotel door creaked open and a familiar wild-haired silhouette appeared in the rectangle of light.

"Speak of the devil," David exclaimed.

"Thought that was you," Michael muttered. David sputtered into laughter. 

Michael ignored him. "Hellooooo!" he called over. 

"What are you two doing out here?" Neil said, making his way across the car park. "Making trouble? Plotting mayhem? Doing yoga?"

"David's decided he's going to make you have a baby," Michael said. 

Neil's startled blink was visible even in the washed-out light. David laughed even harder.

"And I've decided I want to see him have a go," Michael added.

David's laughter was beginning to sound pained.

"Also he wants you to name it Warlock Snumperdink. So do you mind holding still for a moment while he gets to work?"

Neil opened his mouth and closed it again. "You know what?" he said at last. "I've just remembered that I have a pressing appointment. _Very_ pressing." He turned around, shaking his head, and departed rather more quickly than he'd come.

"Rude," Michael said.

David lay back on the bonnet of the car and then slid, in his best lazy-noodle manner, to the ground. "Not tickety boo at all," he said, leaning his head against the front left tire. 

"Neither boo nor tickety," Michael agreed.

"I shan't give him a baby after all," said David with sudden decision. "He doesn't deserve one. Probably name it something boring anyway."

"Like 'David,'" Michael couldn't resist saying. He nudged David with his foot.

David smacked him on the leg. "Oi! As if 'Michael' is much better." 

"Who do we know that's deserving, then?" Michael said, choosing to ignore that. "Who's done us a good deed, of late?"

"Hmm." David's head tipped sideways even further. Michael used a knee to hedge him back upwards. "Considering the delights of this evening," David said, "and excepting Anna, who has already been so blessed, and the football manufacturer who is sadly out of reach, perhaps the bartender. If…"

Michael nodded. "If he'll serve us another round," he finished. They grinned at each other, and Michael held out a hand to help David to his feet.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [head, shoulders, knees, and toes (and a little chubby face) [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20584691) by [aethel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aethel/pseuds/aethel)


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